Gearbox lays out the future of ‘Borderlands 2,’ starting with new character Krieg the Psycho

When it comes to their other projects, Gearbox Software isn’t exactly known for their timeliness. It took them more than five years to deliver Aliens: Colonial Marines after first announcing the game. Two years back Gearbox announced Brothers In Arms: Furious 4 at E3 and then promptly never brought it up again. On the bright side, though, Gearbox never keeps its legions of Borderlands fans waiting for long. Whether it’s new downloadable content, new patches, or even full-fledged sequels—Borderlands 2 did hit just three years after the original—there’s been a steady stream of Borderlands in the world since 2009. The studio started teasing big changes for Borderlands 2 at the beginning of the month, including a new playable character, and now it’s shared all the details.

Borderlands 2 will get the brand new, aptly named Pycho Pack expansion in May. The $10 downloadable content’s main course is the new playable character, Krieg the Psycho. Krieg will give people their first chance to play as one of the game’s iconic bad guys, the mask-wearing psychos, and his unique skill sets will be built around their charming, unhinged personalities. His skills are broken into Bloodlust upgrades that focus on combat boosts, the fire-based Hellfire abilities, and Mania skills that turn him into a berserker. No word on whether Mania skills will make Krieg start muttering hilarious nonsense, but knowing Borderlands’ writing staff, it seems likely.

Before Krieg comes out, though, there’s also the Ultimate Vault HunterUpgrade downloadable content that comes out on Apr. 2. This $5 set raises the level cap in the game from 50 to 61, and introduces a new difficulty mode only for characters above level 50. That mode has whole new weapons and rebalanced enemies for masochistic and/or obsessive players to throw themselves at. This set is included for Season Pass holders.

Neither of these expansions are the fourth and final campaign expansions promised for the Season Pass. That will follow in June. There may well be more downloadable content after that, though. At SXSW when Gearbox first teased Krieg, it said the fourth campaign expansion would only be the last entry in the “current” Season Pass, implying that another round of paid campaign expansions will follow in late 2013 and 2014.